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The opinions expressed on this page are mine alone. Any similarities to the views of my employer are completely coincidental.

Monday 15 September 2014

Sweden moves to the left...or is it the right?

The outcome of the Swedish election is that the Social Democrats will try to form a government in coalition with the other left and centre left parties. But as is clear from DN's front page graphic the aggregate result is actually indicative of a shift to the right. The left block maintained their overall position, while the centre right lost ground to the  xenophobic populist Sweden Democrats (does this  suggest a possible scenario over here in 2015?). At the moment neither the left nor the right block want to touch the Sweden Democrats with a barge pole. 

That was easy to say when the SwDs only had 6 per cent of the votes. Now they have 13 per cent and are the third largest party with  just less than 50 seats. Still, a party that refuses to have an integration policy because it doesn't want any integration is going to be difficult for the mainstream parties to do business with.


So unless the left block can attract one of the smaller centre right parties to join the coalition they are going to have to rely on ad hoc deals done on an issue by issue basis. Clearly there is going to be trouble ahead. I've a feeling I've seen this before - wasn't it called Borgen...?

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